Manvar Desert Camp and Resort

After Khuri, and some sightseeing in the city of Jaisalmer, our next destination was Manvar camp and resort, near Dechu, located off Jodhpur-Jaisalmer highway - 175 km from Jaisalmer and 110 from Jodhpur. This road is just amazing and we missed driving ourselves on these beautiful roads. Manvar is a luxurious resort, with lot of greenery inside, amidst the shades of brown in the desert. Thanks to Archana Srinivas’ blog - Rang Décor, this was where I learnt about this beautiful place. The tented camps about 7km interior from the resort and is a real treat. This place was greener with much more vegetation. We were on a jeep to the tents during sunset and it was amazing to watch the sunset amidst browns and greens. Peacocks are a common sight here.
A fox, which was supposed to be rare, did stop by our jeep, and poised for a shot.

Spent the night at the camp, enjoyed the lovely evening with campfire and music and dance with some drinks and snacks.
We trekked to a nearby hillock next morning for some birding and sunrise. Here's a view of the camps from the hillock...

Then after a sumptuous breakfast, went on a jeep safari. I was amazed at the number of birds here, and the ease with which they can be spotted, thanks to the scanty vegetation. We did spot some Indian Gazelle(Chinkara), came across some smaller sand dunes, sand slides and some village houses.

A Sand slide

Chinkara
A neelgai.... these were in plenty...And the evening was for ourselves, at a small temple on a hillock near the resort, and again watching the sun go down the horizon. I think I can never get bored of watching sunsets.....

Some glimpses of Manvar....
The pathway into the resort

Some antiques

Tents on sand

Camp restaurant
Pool at the resort
The temple on the neighbouring hillock

Check out the bird pictures here.

It was a wonderful stay at Manvar.

A camel ride into the Desert National Park

I didn’t know a safari on a camel back was such an exercise for the bones and joints! Our camel was Laal, and there were four more in the gang, with three boys to manage the camels and four foreign tourists along with the two of us. Sitting high on camel back, holding on to it when it sways forward and backward to get up, and riding on it, jumping up and down was fun. Especially when Laal and his friends decided to run a bit to add to the excitement, at one point, I was almost off the camel and screamed! I blamed Dee for the camel running too fast and not taking care of his wife and the boys made fun saying it’d have been a task for them to search me in the desert, had I fallen off!

It was a bigger dune this time than what we had seen the previous day. And we were truly deserted - there was no one else except our gang for as far as we could see! We were to spend the night here, in the open, in the cold! We were excited. We walked around as much as we could till the sun set, not able to take enough of the desert. As it got dark, there was a camp fire for warming as well as cooking. The boys cooked a meal for us, while we all sang and talked to each other, the boys also pulling each other’s legs.
After dinner, while we were for another round of walking on the sands, and warming up, the boys made our beds, and showed us our ‘room’ for the night.
And here was our room and our neighbors’... ;)

It was too cold, in spite of the blankets and thin mattress we had, but it was a memorable experience to open your eyes in the middle of the night to see only sand and sand around you and stars over your head, and the half moon slowly rising in the east! We watched the moon rise for sometime and fell back asleep.
I was the first one to wake up next morning, as I didn’t want to miss seeing the sunrise. A bowl of hot black tea on the cold morning was welcome. We watched the sunrise, went out for a long walk around the scrubs on one side, finding many more birds, experiencing the desert. Well, the birds here woke up much later after the sun rose, may be because of the cold weather.
After breakfast, I had my ‘myself time’ just walking about with Mother Nature when Dee had gone with the boys to find the camels that were wandering off in the night.
When we were back, again on camel backs, I asked the others ‘Aren’t your joints aching?’‘Are you kidding?’ replied one of the girls in the gang, ‘do you have any left? I have no joints any more!’

It was true, but it was worth every bit of the pain.

Khuri - A Desert Village

After deciding that our next trip would be in the Thar Desert, we started debating on the exact locations. We knew we shouldn’t miss the sand dunes around Jaisalmer, but of the two famous ones - Sam and Khuri, we couldn’t decide which one. After reading reviews and hearing from friends, that Sam is way too crowded when compared to Khuri, we decided Khuri was the place - as both of us like calm rather than crowd!
We reached Jaisalmer by train from Jaipur at around noon, hired a taxi to Khuri - about 40km southwest. We heard from the driver that this year there was a lot of rain due to which the desert was more filled with shrubs and small plants. I was afraid we wouldn’t get to see the actual dunes, and just kept my fingers crossed.
As we reached Khuri, I was amazed to see the number of camp-resorts in that little village, tourism is definitely becoming one of the biggest business there, especially in winter. Most of the buildings are of yellow sandstone, as in Jaisalmer - the reason why Jaisalmer is called the Golden city.
We got into the home stay - Badal House, run by a real gentleman, Badal Singh, about which Dee will write in detail. (Yes, we have a pact and share topics and write, when it comes to travel!) As we freshened up and had a small talk with the owner, the weather suddenly became cloudy and windy. Once wind blows, there will be a few millimeters of fine sand settled over and around you, which we had already experienced in the train. And in a couple of minutes the weather became too chill and there was a small shower of rain! We had to postpone our plans for camel safari and camping for the night that we had planned for the next day.
Had I told you, wherever we go, be it any season, the rains surely follow us! And this we’ve been observing in all our trips throughout last year. We just smiled at ourselves, and set out in the drizzle, to explore and experience the desert ourselves.
I was amazed at the number of birds that we spotted, and Dee started shooting them. A few meters of walk out of the village and there we saw the dunes! Pure, neat and secluded! Wasn’t this what we wanted!! We started walking in that direction and what seemed to be so near took so long to reach. As we neared, there were hordes of people arriving in buses, jeeps, vans and even on camels to the dunes to watch the sunset, and with all the shor-sharaba! Oops, we immediately changed our direction and moved further to a calmer portion, away from all the noise, just to calmly enjoy the beauty of nature and watch the sunset from the clear sand dunes.
How beautiful nature is! It was a treat to walk on the clear sand dunes, watching the sun go down, with chill wind blowing on your face. Just as the sun set, it began to get colder, and we started walking back to the village, happy and satisfied for having chosen this place.

Check out the birds here.

Proud of you, Mom!

Mom has won the first prize in ‘Masthi Kadambari Puraskara’ for this year for her new novel in Kannada titled “Mane”. Masthi Venkatesh Iyengar is a legendary Kannada writer of the last century whose works in the field of Kannada literature are immense. Now ‘Masthi trust’ recognizes budding writers each year and rewards them for their work.

The felicitation ceremony was held yesterday, on Gandhi Jayanthi, which was presided over by honorable Chief Minister of Karnataka Mr. Yedyurappa, who released the book as well as felicitated the awardees. So Mom was on the same stage with Karnataka CM!

The CM also unveiled two volumes of “Masthi Samagra Samputa Avalokana”, compiled by Sri Mavinakere Ranganathan, President of the trust.

This Kadambari Puraskara is a strict competition, where the panel of five renowned judges are kept unaware of the writers’ names and asked to judge the novels. Only after the decision is made that the authors’ names are revealed.

This time, all the first three prizes have been bagged by female writers!
Details:
1st prize - Mane by Saraswathi Nataraj, Rs.30000/-
2nd prize - Kicchillada bege by Dr. Kamala Hemmige, Rs.25000/-
3rd prize - Kamini thalpa by Usha Narasimhan, Rs.20000/-

Congratulations and proud of you, mom!

P.S.: All above pics are shot by Dee :)

Twosome - Two‘Sum’

There are always two ‘Sum’s within me.....
One who is happy and another who is sad, a pessimist and an optimist. One wants to forgive and forget and another keeps remembering and wants revenge. One is quite selfish and another utterly selfless. One is calculative of all petty things and another very liberal about even bigger things. One who decides not to do any good to someone and another who, in the next instant offers to help the same someone! One tries to be cheerful all the time, and another gets depressed in a fraction of a second. One loves anyone and anything and another one thinks she hates everyone and everything.
There is a constant combat between these two. This moment it is one Sum and the next, it is the other. Now one rules and at after now, ruled over by the other. Am I bad or am I good?

Why are there two me’s in me?
Are there two you’s in you too?

The God of Small Things

Just finished reading ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy. Well, it is a very touching novel. Very different. Very real. It’s sure to wet your eyes at least a couple of times. Or more if you’re more emotional.
It’s about a pair of twins - a boy and a girl, whose father would have betrayed his kids and their mother, after which, the well educated mother brings up the twins being both their mother and father.
At the age of eight, the twins are separated from each other due to circumstances. For no real fault of theirs. Well as the author says, for them, there was no each. There was no other. There was no each other. They were one. And a part of them was gone. .

And they’ll be away and incomplete for 23 long years. All their childhood is lost. Their youth is lost. In fact, their life is lost. They lose their mother and their beloved untouchable companion - for having violated a law. A law set by the clean, touchable society. Of who should be loved, how and how much.

The author touches upon all these minute yet strong details in her story.
Untouchability, Communism, Marxism, Religion, Male dominated society, Domestic Violence, Political brutality, Selfishness, Children, Their dreams, Their abuse, Punishments for doing wrong and for not doing wrong, Well Acceptable Men’s Needs, and of course Unacceptable Women’s needs.

Every character in the book has their own story. The narration is quite unique. She takes the readers back and forth in time. She reveals bits and pieces of the history and comes back to the present. Leaves the rest of it for later.
‘Lay Ter’ as she calls it.
The ‘later’ filled with the most unexpected.

Her style of writing is quite different too.
With regular sentences.
With one word sentences.
With two word sentences.
With three word sentences.
With no word sentences. The most important of all. Where there are no words to tell, yet lies a big story there.

One of the lines that touched me: “When you hurt someone with careless words, they begin to love you less”.
Careless words make people love us a little less. How true!

The story is put up very well. Very touching. It is a sad story. But then is that not what most of the stories are, in the real world?

More lessons

Ok, so after just a couple of days of listing those sad lessons, here are some more, but in contrast to the previous one!
- Family always ranks first when it comes to support during hard times. Though we may crib about family members about petty issues, they surely back you when you most need
- Messing up with a gadget accidentally need not spoil days and nights of yours - these things happen by mistake and can be fixed. There are more important things that should be taken care not to mess up with
- All acquaintances need not be friends. And those who are real friends will remain so forever
- What you give to the world comes back to you in multi-fold. Trying giving a little happiness and you’ll be bounced back with loads of it

I wonder how mind changes from sad to happy, depressed to joyful, frustrated to content in a matter of a couple of days!

Some lessons learnt in the recent past...

• Good things do not happen to you when you’re doing good things for others
• When you want to do a favor for someone, keep in mind that you will be hit back. The bigger the favor the harder is the hit back
• There is no use in voicing your valuable opinion where people are not ready to consider it.
• Do not be too passionate about your work. You don’t actually own it though you’re expected to take ownership of it.
• People remember one bad thing that they think you’ve done and forget the nine good things they know you’ve done
• Talk only when you are sure people are ready to listen
• Most people consider you as their friend only till they are in need of your friendship. They don’t necessarily consider you once they are off to a next level.
• Be extra careful when handling expensive objects...
• The WGS attitude is not always easy to follow!

Well these are some random things that I’ve learnt recently, but will stop here.... I’m so so depressed today......

Crow and Cuckoo

The crow built a cozy little nest with her partner, working hard every day. With the nest she built many a dream of herself and her partner, living peacefully and cozily in that little nest. She got in a variety of soft material like pieces of rags, feathers, cotton pieces and so on from here and there, trying to make the place warm and cozy for her little ones. Her kids would be born there, and she would feed them well and teach them to fly. Theirs would then be a perfect little family.

The nest was then built fully; she laid eggs there, her dream getting stronger everyday. Then came in a cuckoo, when the crows were away. The cuckoo slyly pushed aside one of the crow’s eggs and lay her own in place of it and fled. The crow that was totally oblivious of her egg replaced by cuckoo’s, scrupulously continued with her work of hatching the eggs.

The cuckoo’s egg hatched first, way before her own and she was excited. She fed the little one with all her might and saw the little one grow up. By now she realized that it was not her own kid, but she continued to feed the little one, since the little one was born in her own nest, by her own warmth,a nd it was away from its parents. What she failed to notice was that in bringing up her pseudo-kid, she neglected her own eggs and had failed to hatch them.

The little cuckoo grew stronger and faster, feeding on all that was fed by its crow-mother. The crow excitedly gave lessons to the little one on how to fly. In its ambition to fly, the little one had pushed off the other unhatched eggs out of the nest while fluttering its wings. It soon learnt to fly and off it flew, and joined its cuckoo group.
Back at the nest, the crow was left alone with its partner.

Facts:
Cuckoos indeed do find a crows’ nest and lay eggs there. They are cunning enough as the male distracts the crows away from their nest, and the female quickly lays its eggs there. The cuckoo’s egg is hatched first and the little one grows faster. Meanwhile the cunning little one pushes off the crow’s eggs or the baby crows and gobbles most of the food brought in by the parent crows. The crows do realize that it is not their baby, but still feed it. They start hating the young one only when it starts coooo-cooo-ing unlike their kaw-kwas. By then the young one would have grown enough to fly off and join its group. The story repeats again when the little one grows up when it again finds another crow nest to lay eggs.
Facts Courtesy: KP Poornachandra Tejaswi’s MinchuLLi

Hima-Bulbul

Of late, my morning alarm is of a pair of red whiskered bulbuls, a few feet outside our window. They exactly start chirping a little after six every morning! I don’t know if I should call it ‘chirp’... it’s so distinct from other chirps. They make this sweet musical 3-note or 4-note sound like twee-twi-toooo or twi-ti-tu-toooo.....

As I said previously, my little niece Hima is also fascinated with birds now. Or she is fascinated about being fascinated like her atte! One morning I just walked down the road with her and showed her these bulbuls, and their distinct crest (which I told her was a ‘juttu’). She was, needless to say excited about a bird with a ‘juttu’ on its head.

She ran into the room as soon as we got back home and got a comb and a small rubber band. She made me tie her recently cut, short hair into a ‘juttu’. I could manage to bring together a little hair and tied it up for her. She looked into the mirror, jumped with joy and announced to everybody that she was now ‘Hima-bulbul’!

Birding...

My interest in birds is gradually increasing! Though I have not yet done any formal ‘bird-watching’ yet, I have just been observing all the birds around office and home. Luckily my house as well as the office is outside the city, in the remote outskirts, where the birds are not yet extinct. There are many parakeets, bulbuls, robins, barbets, cuckoos, etc etc.

I must confess it was only recently that I watched cuckoos closely and could identify them. I had earlier mistaken a Drongo to be cuckoo. And whenever I heard the cuckoo’s ‘koo’ I had not been able to spot one at all. I didn’t know that the female is brown with whitish spots and made shrill ‘kwi-kwi-kwi’ while the male was bluish black with red eyes and sang ‘kooo’ in summer and also made the ‘kwu-kwu-kwu’ sound....

It’s an amazing world of birds, that’ll keep you fascinated once you get hooked on to it... Also, little Hima gives me good company in bird-watching! When she’s woken up early, she accompanies me to walk down the road and find birds; we took her out to a remote layout one evening where she spotted and showed me more birds than I could find myself, and so on. I was elated when her mom said yesterday that she showed her a cuckoo and explained to her that it was a ‘kogile’ and made ‘kooo’ sound. And she was excited about a group of parrots and told her mom ‘Wow! geen color pakshi’ (green bird)!

And this bird watchin fever has spread to my friends at office too! One team mate of mine told me that a little bird is building a nest on her exhaust fan and so she’s stopped using the fan and has been watching them. She has to frequently clean her kitchen slab because the birds are dropping some strands of grass all over! And at tea time my mates show me birds around and say they were never like this before!

Recently bought this book on birds by Poornachandra Tejaswi - ‘MinchuLLi’ meaning Kingfisher. It’s about different birds, facts about them and the author’s personal experience with some of them. Loved reading it and got to know quite a lot about some of them. There is a second book by him, which also we bought which I’ve just started reading. There is quite a bit of information that is presented, along with some interesting facts. It’s more like reading a blog with pictures than reading a book!

So, that’s about it.... but unfortunately I’ve still not been able to go birding with Chandu and his group :(..... not sure when it’s possible....

Indian Robins family - Season 2

Well, if you’ve been following my Indian Robin series, then you must be waiting for updates on the Season 2 of their story. But I’m afraid it’s not all happy happy ending this time.... :(

To state it in a fair detail, after I said that the birds had returned to their old nest and laid 3 eggs, similar to last year, they almost disappeared for 4-5 days. I was concerned whether they’d return or not, but they did. And the next day one of the eggs had hatched and the little one was of that black mass of flesh.

Both the male and female birds took care of the nest for the next 4-5 days, the mother, I supposed was hatching the other two eggs and the father was feeding the little one. Even after 4-5 days, the other two eggs did not hatch, and the little one grew faster this time than the previous time.

And surprisingly, the little one flew off the nest in less than a week, leaving behind the two un-hatched eggs. Even the parents disappeared..... It’s almost a week since then, and there is no sign of them.... Wonder why......

Birds are back!!

Yes! All those beautiful birds that had almost vanished in winter are back with the onset of summer! Those friendly Indian robins too had become a rarity for a few months.

And this time we were lucky enough to click a kingfisher, though from a huge distance....

And another one was a woodpecker Hoopoe that came and sat right in front of home, and started singing, nodding its head right and left for a couple of minutes! And lucky enough, it gave us a chance to click one pic.

There are so many other visitors, which I fail to recognize, and couldn’t even take a click...
And guess what?? The Indian robin pair that bred on the terrace is back again! And they are back to the same nest, which had left undisturbed since last year, and today we discovered they’ve again laid a clutch of 3 eggs! Now there’s some inspiration to get home from work early and watch these little beauties..... How I wish I can catch them learning to fly, which I missed last time.....

Will keep you all posted if something special happens....

P.S. Birders, please elaborate on these birds :)

The “Who gives a S***!” attitude

When this new lead joined our team a few months ago, we were all quite shocked to get used to his way of talking. His talk would be full of ‘French and Latin’, as he calls it! And being in a conservative environment earlier, we’d all feel quite uncomfortable listening to him use words like sh** so many times in every sentence.... his favorite one being “Who gives a Sh**!” And he being our lead, and having no issues with him in any other way, all we could do was to get used to it.

Well, now after all these months, we’ve got so used to it, it’s no longer a weird statement for us. On the contrary, it is one of our ‘well-being mantras’. Yeah, seriously! This “Who gives a Sh**” attitude comes as a savior, at least to me when I’m on the verge of breaking out or breaking down. I just tell myself this mantra, and off I am, back in my safe state.

Of course, it’s not been easy to adopt this attitude, especially for some extra-sensitive people like me, but a little bit of practice is what it takes to change our attitude. Good thing is that I’ve taught Dee also this, and he too is picking up. And at least this way, I mostly avoid going deep into depression and striving hard to get out of it.

Now, this mantra comes to my rescue in many situations like when someone’s trying to put me down, or get me into a verbal war or try to intentionally or unintentionally hurt me, try to demand too much of me or go on complaining endlessly, treat me with no concern and many more. Of course this should be carefully applied and can not be and should not be applied to people who really really are concerned about you! And beware, apply it only when you know you are right.

Shocked and don’t like this new, completely opposite attitude of mine?
Well, who gives a Sh**!

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Today is the same as yesterday, tomorrow will be the same as today. Everyday seems just the same, identical to its previous day and next day. The more I look forward to a change, the probability of it gets lesser. The closer I feel I am, the farther it appears to move. There were times when I had dreaded change, but now I’m just longing for one. The more things I do to wade away the monotony, all those things start becoming monotonous.

The hope that a new year is a new beginning or that a new month brings in a change or that a new week would be different from the previous is all just a mere hope. It might take ages in reality. But I’m sure one day things will change, and for good..... dreaming of things that I’m awaiting for everyday makes the wait easier. As long as the dream itself has not become one boring part, there is color in life.......

P.S. - Well, on second thoughts, life has not become that boring too..... but still, it is monotonous enough for me to go ahead and post this :)

A new block buster movie in Bangalore at 50 bucks!

Yeah... this used to be possible about a decade ago during our college days when we’d occasionally go to theatre to watch movies. And then came the malls and multiplexes, replacing the ordinary single-screen age old theatres. With this, rose the cost of movie-watching too. Watching a movie in Bangalore costs anywhere between 150 to 500+ bucks, depending on the day of the week and the movie.

Also the tickets need to be booked in advance. And driving to any of these ‘multiplexes’ which are at least an hour’s drive from home in heavy weekend traffic is a pain in itself.

For people like us, whose weekends are mostly quite unpredictable, planning out a movie-watching program had quite become a saga. We also missed a movie or two since we got tied up in some priority work though the tickets were booked. Due to all these, our movie watching had terribly reduced in the last year - just one movie in the whole of 2009!

We realized this early this year and were contemplating on some of the latest hit movies - Paa, 3 Idiots and so on, trying to decide upon the date and place, when we came across this ‘Venkateshwara theatre’ very close to home. Of course, we knew we should expect a cinema hall of the 90’s, but nevertheless wanted to give a try. So on a Saturday, quite unplanned, we just went in search of this hall in very narrow lanes. The then-showing movie was ‘Suryakanthi’, a kannada recent release. Though the movie was not so great, the cinema hall was pretty decent - for the 40 bucks that we gave per ticket! It did remind us of our childhood cinema halls, but I should say the sound system was not that bad, and the push-back seats were decent too.

Okay, we thought, we can just drop in here 10 minutes before the evening show, even on weekends, and watch some average movies. And to our surprise, the next week, when we were planning to go for 3 idiots and searching through the newspaper for the show timings in Forum, we saw that our dear Venkateshwara theatre was playing ‘3 idiots’!!!

At 5-30, being very sure that we won’t get the tickets for the 6pm show, that too on day 2 of the movie showing here, we still left home thinking we’ll buy tickets for the next day. And to our surprise, at 5-45, there were still ‘Balcony’ tickets available and for 50 bucks each!! And the hall was half empty! For a movie that is costing about 300 bucks in multiplexes, with all the complications, one sixth the amount was a great fair deal! The movie-count for this year is already 2 now, and I’ve decided to keep a watch on all the movies playing here.

If...

If only you were here today...

You’d have seen all the things
That you had always longed to;
You’d have had all those things,
And done all those things
That you’d wanted, and beyond.

You could have seen
All your hard work pay off.
You’d be so proud of
Your own self and your dearest ones

If only you were here today,
You’d be turning another year older
And we’d be celebrating it
With you in great joy

Though you are not here with us
I’m sure in every step of ours,
You’re watching and guiding us.....
Whatever be it, the fact is that
It’s not the same as you being here....

If only you were here today...
Our life would have been
So different and pleasant

A flashback into 2009

It’s another New Year, and strangely this time, I’m not feeing anything new, with the New Year!
Still, would like to come up with a high level report of the year, to look back after a few years!

January was not so good, with Dee meeting with a small accident and having an ankle sprain. Then came some unexpected, shocking uncertainties at his work place. That was followed by some more, shocking uncertainties at my workplace! The economic slowdown had kind of hit our company too.

In spite of these, or rater due to these, we just wanted to take a break, and early February, headed for a trip to the beautiful backwaters of Kerala – Alleppey and Ashtamudi. Had a wonderful break from all the tensions.

March was mostly uneventful, except for Dee confirming his booking for Sarpass trek and me cribbing about it!

April started with some disappointments and continued to be not so great, with hardly any peace of mind. Dee left to Sarpass, and I went to Ooty with mom and sis and had a good time.
Spent early May waiting for his return, and then the rest of the month just flew off, happily.

Went on a driving trip with 2 more cousins to historical places – Belur, Halebidu, Dwarasamudra, Doddagaddavalli – admiring the monuments of Hoysala dynasty.

July was pretty much occupied with some medical treatments, and some poojas – the typical Shravana maasa!

Another short and tiring trip to Dee’s grandma’s place in August, followed by more festivals!

September was quite eventful, with our Dasara preparations, and an unexpected 15 km leechy trek in Bedaguli forest range with Dee’s team. I was so glad that I could trek as I had not been on a single proper trek with Dee so far, due to my repeated ligament injuries.

October was a super busy month, starting with a trip to Wayanad, Dee’s trip to North Karnataka for flood relief work, my preparations for wedding anniversary gifts for him, followed by the trip of the year – a beach resort in Pondicherry to end the month.

November also had another disappointment and a trip with inlaws to Coorg :)

And December too had an unexpected trip in store – a one day visit to Shimoga to attend a wedding. Followed by year end vacation, during which 4 days was spent at mom’s place and another trip to end the year at Agumbe.

Whew! That’s quite a number of trips last year!!! Anyways.... Enjoy life to the fullest, travel as much as possible was the mantra of 2009 :)

Let’s see what’s in store in 2010......

Wish you all a Happy and Prosperous New Year 2010.